To visually emphasize the point being made here. This 777-200LR is less than four years old.

There are two ways to look at this:
(1) A tremendous buying opportunity might be getting even better, and
(2) The residual values on airplanes Delta's paying cash for have taken a beating on the world wide market ... of course it does not matter unless we sell them, but, could be a big write down outside of our operating results.

 

Also, KLM flies the MD11, not AF.

 

He won't in the primaries. I should find that email response from the abu dhabi preclearance facility, but basically he told me that he didn't see any problem with it. No.. he isn't interested in our industry, but if the Hildabeast runs, I'll pull a lever for him.

 

Perhaps. And actually, there has been no order of any kind as of yet. The RFP included just about every thing that flies with 2 aisles, so kind of hard to get excited at this juncture about any of this. We are gonna buy some widebody airplanes. Don't know which ones, or how many, but we are gonna buy some. Good. Some are gonna be replacements for 747s and 767-ERs. Not so good. However, not liking the word "replacement" as you choose to call a doom and gloom position is myopic on your part. It is a very real English word that has in this case the very real intimation of swapping one airframe for another. I will however, stipulate that the growth part of the equation is open ended. An order of 50 widebodies under the auspices of "growth" would be far more exciting for all pilots at the airline. Replacement airframes are like kissing ones' sister. (or so I'm told). I am glad... really.. that you see the glass having something in it, and in most cases I tend to be way more optimistic. In this case however, I am withholding judgement until I see the order and the subsequent fleet retirement plan. If it is net positive, I'll be excited. If not, I will make sure my sister wears my shade of lipstick.

 

It'll be Jeb.

 

Flew MSP to SLC last night with many DL pilots returning from Capt Maloney's funeral in Minot. Evidently it was a very well attended service which included DL, Marine/ANG and Airshow pilots and many others who we're grateful to have known him. Thanks to DL for adding several extra 320 sections when a couple RJ's cancelled due to the winter storm in minot. I never met Capt Maloney..but our jumpseater said his wife was very appreciative of the large turn out and she thanked everyone individually for making the trip to pay their respects to such a well respected aviator.

Fair winds and following seas...

 

d'oh

No

d'oh.

It gets hard going from Excel to browser back to excel back to browser and none of the fleets are written in an easy format to read on wikipedia. AirFleets was too slow.



One thing I get from seeing the numbers is we're not as small as I thought on the WB side. Yes UAL is huge, but, I guess if the goal is to maximize margins in good times and bad then having a majority of your lift be with jets under 300 passengers kind of makes sense.

Especially since you have two major domestic competitors to go up against, multiple hubs spread out over 3.1 million square miles of land in the CONUS. And you're competing internationally against "national/home" airlines with all of their soft or hard government support and in the case of UAE it's only 32,000 sq miles.

 

Anyone know when we elect what to do with our DC money? I don't want to end up with some crap annuity earning 2% when I could roll it into my 401K

Thanks, Erik

 

I heard April 15th. But I havent received any details.

TEN

 

how about a friendly game of spot the pilot...